Passed away peacefully in Aventura, FL, on Monday, September 7, 2015, after battling brain cancer for two years; he was 72. Son of Mirko Fuchs, of Zagreb, Croacia, and Leopoldina Pregelj, of Trieste, Italy, (both deceased); born in Castelnuovo Don Bosco, region of Piedmont, province of Asti, Italy, on November 24, 1942. Brother of Jenny, of Freeport, ME. Married to Pubenza Valderruten Peters, of Aventura, FL. Father of Alex and Robert, of Denver, CO, and San Diego, CA respectively, children of his first marriage. His parents moved the family to Switzerland shortly after his birth in the middle of WWII, returning to then Yugoslavia at the end of the war. At age 7 the family moved to recently-founded Israel and again at age 12 to Cali, Colombia, South America, where he was to spend his adolescence and early youth.
He attended the Santa Librada High School and then the Universidad del Valle, both in Cali, Colombia, graduating in 1967 with a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering. Next, he came to this country to continue his studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in Cambridge, MA, where he obtained both a Master of Science (1969) and a PhD in Biochemical Engineering (1974). The first 14 years of his professional career were at Schering-Plough Corp., in Union, NJ (as well as Puerto Rico, Brazil and Mexico), where he rose to the rank of Sr. Director, Biotechnology Process Development. In 1988 he joined Centocor, Inc., in Malvern, PA, where he soon reached the position of Sr. VP, Pharmaceutical Development. Then, in 1993, he moved to one of the largest biotechs at the time, Chiron Corp., in Emeryville, CA, as Sr. VP, Biopharma Operations and Process Development (PD), responsible for manufacturing plants and PD labs in Emeryville and Vacaville, CA, St. Louis, MO, Puerto Rico, Amsterdam (Netherlands), Marburg (Germany) and Sienna (Italy); during his tenure, Chiron’s capacity for manufacturing biopharma products was greatly expanded to produce newly approved drugs like Betaseron © for the treatment of multiple sclerosis (MS), and Menjugate, a vaccine to prevent Meningitis C, as well as many other biotech drugs and vaccines in various stages of development and clinical studies worldwide. After leaving Chiron in 2002, he returned to the Boston area and held positions at the Sr. VP level at several biotech companies, including Transkaryotic Therapies, Inc (TKT); Shire HGT; and Altus Pharmaceuticals, all in Cambridge, MA. Since 2007 he was a consultant to the international biopharma industry; he was also a member of the board of directors of Auxilium Pharmaceuticals as well as several advisory boards.
For his engineering contributions in the design, construction, and operation of large-scale manufacturing of recombinant DNA proteins he was elected a lifelong member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1994. At various times during his long and illustrious career, he was also a member of Industrial Advisory Boards at MIT, UC Berkeley and Lehigh University. The memorial service will be on Sunday, September 13, 2015, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., at the Caballero Rivero Hialeah funeral home, 373 W 9th St 377, Hialeah, FL 33010, Tel. 305-888-6792. For additional information, please see http://www.dignitymemorial.com/rivero-hialeah/en-us/index.page
Arrangements under the direction of Caballero Rivero Hialeah, HIALEAH, FL.
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